Brandon W. Jones

I am agreeance with the tone of the article that the transplant system as a whole was where the mistake was made. Although the surgeon, James Jaggers, should have checked the blood type before starting the surgery, he should not be the only one held responsible for the mishap. In the system that was in place, everyone involved in the transplant process was taking everyone else’s word on the blood type and not checking it themselves. The system should be set up such that the people involved cannot fail unless they go against the system. The instance of Dr. James Jaggers may have been significantly publicized and received a lot of attention, but the article stated that there were other cases where the blood types were not matched for the transplants; those other doctors were just lucky because their patients didn’t die after the operation.

In order for the system to be successful, they must eliminate most if not all chances of possible mishap. A proper system should be setup such that the chance for human error is minimal. This ideal system would have a set of several checks where the person would have to sign there name to catch errors along the way, before an error becomes life threatening. In the case of the Duke medical system/organ procurement organization, there weren’t enough checks to catch the error of the blood type.